' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, I knocked Fox on the head, without
ceremony. Reynolds is too much under Fox and Burke at present. He is
under the _Fox star_ and the _Irish constellation_. He is always under
some planet[754].' BOSWELL. 'There is no Fox star.' JOHNSON. 'But there is
a dog star.' BOSWELL. 'They say, indeed, a fox and a dog are the same
animal.'
I reminded him of a gentleman, who, Mrs. Cholmondeley said, was first
talkative from affectation, and then silent from the same cause; that he
first thought, 'I shall be celebrated as the liveliest man in every
company;' and then, all at once, 'O! it is much more respectable to be
grave and look wise.' 'He has reversed the Pythagorean discipline, by
being first talkative, and then silent. He reverses the course of Nature
too: he was first the gay butterfly, and then the creeping worm.'
Johnson laughed loud and long at this expansion and illustration of what
he himself had told me.
We dined together with Mr. Scott (now Sir William Scott[755], his
Majesty's Advocate General,) at his chambers in the Temple, nobody else
there. The company being small, Johnson was not in such spirits as he
had been the preceding day, and for a considerable time little was said.
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